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Saturday, April 15, 2006

there's something about mary

The thing about the weather is that when it finally becomes nice out, life just seems grand. Today we had highs near 80 degrees. In New York! In April! I KNOW! We took a nice walk en famille and had breakfast at the diner, looked at all the flowers blooming and the leaves coming out at the park, and then we stopped by Walgreens to buy some Kit Kats. Life is good.

This strong sense of well-being is in no small way owed to the fact to the peace of mind of knowing that Cal has just been so happy this past week. Mary has been awesome. Honestly, I never knew it could be like this. Cal loves her. We love her. She plays music for him and reads him books and takes him to the park and cuddles and snuggles him, and oh, it's so good. You know, I used to say to Joe (when we were discussing some shortcoming or other regarding Georgia's job performance, and I was making excuses to forestall the inevitable), "Well, you know, you can't expect anyone to take care of Cal the way we would if we were home with him." But you know, I was totally wrong about that. Mary does take care of him like we would. Actually, she may even be doing a better job than us a lot of the time. Do you know happiness? Because happiness is knowing that your child is happy and safe and in good hands when you're at work.

Even though we started out thinking that this would be a temporary situation, we've since asked Mary if she would consider being Cal's primary nanny for as long as her own circumstances will allow. She has accepted, and Joe and I are beyond ecstatic. Because, as you know, we love her. LOVE. HER. With hearts in our eyes! We're still in discussion with one other person, and have a couple of phone numbers of other people to contact, but mainly just with the idea of having them on deck as backup, in case Mary wants a day off once in a while, or goes on vacation or what have you. Basically, we want to make this as pleasant of a job for her as possible. We want her to be happy. Because of the love.

And to think, just a week and a half ago, we were still in Code Red mode. I think my blood pressure must be down at least twenty points since then. (And when I say "points," I really mean millimeters of mercury--but never you mind about that.) Thank god for Mary. And thank god that she e-mailed us in the first place, after reading about our crisis up on this old webpage. Yay for the internet, and thanks, Al Gore! This just proves that the readers of this page are the nicest people out there. Isn't it funny how things work out sometimes?

Currently reading:"Vanishing Acts." Hmmm. So you know, Borders was having this "Buy 2 books, get the 3rd one free" deal. This is just a sneaky marketing scheme that not only sounds better than "33% off" (which is what it boils down to), but also actually gets you to buy three books instead of just one. So anyway, this was the "free" book. So I guess I'm getting what I paid for, huh?